Game, Set and Books: The Wimbledon Book Festival 2012

After not having had time to volunteer at any (!) festivals in September I was really looking forward to the start of the Wimbledon Book Festival, which ran from 6 until 14 October 2012.

On the first festival weekend I helped out with the ‘Gary Mulgrew – Gang of One’ talk, which was intriguing and caused a lot of discussion between the writer and the audience as well as among us volunteers. This was followed by the ’40 Years of Picador’ reading by no less than eight authors all writing about the concept or number of 40. Events were held at a mix of venues around Wimbledon, from the King’s College school to the local library.

I also did a shift at the Jack Straw talk, who presented his memoir ‘Last Man Standing’. It was completely sold out, so we were kept busy with finding seats for audience members with special needs and running the bar afterwards. My last shift was at the reading by bestselling author Kate Mosse (no, not the model), who presented her new novel ‘Citadel’, which is the last in a series of three historical fiction books. As I had already signed up for my next festival, I sadly missed the second weekend with the readings in the big tent and all the children’s events. But there is always next year!

All in all Wimbledon Book Fest had a good mix of vibrant events covering a variety of genres, with dedicated organisers and relaxed, interested audiences. Definitely worth putting in your calendar for 2013.

Folk Forever: Shrewsbury Folk Festival 2012

I’m writing this with the re-runs of the festival favourites streaming in the background and a box of tissues beside me on the desk. There are a couple of ingredients that make a great festival for me: excellent and diverse entertainment, friendly volunteer and staff teams and good organisation, including facilities and food. Shrewsbury Folk Festival scores top marks for all three!

After spending four amazing days volunteering at Shrewsbury (24-27 August 2012) I’m not surprised it sells out months in advance every year. It had the perfect combination of top class musicians and lots of opportunities for festival goers to get involved themselves, from musical workshops and ceilidh dancing (including the folk equivalent of a silent disco) to creative craft workshops, which were not just popular with the little ones.

From the moment I got off the train and met a fellow volunteer who showed me the way to the festival grounds, things just went really smoothly all weekend. I was on the task force team, which was something like a rapid response group and great fun. We did any last minute tasks required like shovelling bark to cover muddy tent areas and patrolling the site to see if our help was needed somewhere.

I pitched my tent in the quiet area near the river, and especially after I got my ‘happy tent’ on Saturday really enjoyed our nomadic folkie village. It was lovely to fall asleep every night with the faint notes of the last gig still audible in the background and being offered a nice cup of tea by my neighbours when I woke up.

The music was brilliant all weekend, so it was really difficult to choose which set to pick at any particular time, given that there were three main tents plus the village stage, dance tent and bars. As I have a real weakness for Americana, sad songs and female voices, I immensely enjoyed seeing Diana Jones again and Caroline Herring for the first time, both of whom have a number of incredible story songs, which I absolutely adored. Jonathan Byrd was also fabulous. I even attended his guitar workshop without actually bringing a guitar. Mind you, I did start playing the Ukulele that weekend together with about 100 others and we had such a blast (see final live performance here).

It has been a long time since I’ve seen so many (about 6.000!) happy people in one place. It’s always hard to predict what a festival is going to be like before seeing it for yourself. Just like Vancouver Folk Fest, which I discovered last year, Shrewsbury is going to echo in my heart for quite some time though, most likely until the next edition in 2013, which I’m already looking forward to. Wearing my festival t-shirt and listening to the stack of CDs from this summer will have to get me through somehow.

Here is a festival photo gallery by fellow festival fan Steven Beasley (thanks for letting me use the above pix of Diana, Caroline and Jim and the closing performance), a video of the wonderful parade of lanterns that were made during the festival weekend and some more videos of individual performances. In fact, you can’t go wrong checking out any of the musicians on this year’s list, they are all fabulous.

Need some literary inspiration? Try one of these book festivals!

I spent last week in lovely Norfolk where I attended the BCLT summer school at UEA in Norwich, officially the yearly literary translation boot camp, inoffically five days of self-confessed ‘word nerds’ obsessing about commas and speech marks.

One of the many highlights of our workshop week was that six fiction writers from six countries were also in attendance, hurrah. We translated excerpts from their work from Spanish, Japanese, German, Dutch, Norwegian and French into English and hung out with them over dinner and in the pub.

This is also how this non-exhaustive list of book festival recommendations came about. It’s just a tiny taste of the literary landscape of each of the countries, so do add a comment if you have any additional favourites. The good thing is half of them are still coming up later this year and all the websites look pretty tempting to any self-respecting literature festival addict. Enjoy the ‘word-nerdy’ browsing!

France

Festival des Correspondances, Manosque, September

http://www.correspondances-manosque.org

Germany/Switzerland

Heidelberger Literaturtage, Heidelberg, May

http://www.heidellittage.de

Internationales Literaturfestival, Leukerbad, July

http://www.literaturfestival.ch

Harbour Front Literaturfestival, Hamburg, September

http://www.harbour-front.org/

Internationales Literaturfestival, Berlin, September

http://www.literaturfestival.com/

Japan

Apparently there is a new literature festival in the pipeline for 2013 in collaboration with the Japan Foundation, so watch this space!

Netherlands

Crossing Border Literature & Music, Den Haag/Enschede/Antwerpen, November

http://www.crossingborder.nl/

Norway

Norsk Litteraturfestival, Lillehammer, May/June

http://www.litteraturfestival.no/english/about-the-festival

Hamsungdagene, Hamarøy, July/August

http://www.knuthamsun.no/info/english.html

Spain

Hay Festival, Segovia, September

http://www.hayfestival.com/segovia/

Wet Dogs & Narrow Boats: The Crick Boat Show 2012

A little while ago I discovered a whole new (for me anyway) festival category: canal festivals! I had a look at a long list of boating events being held this summer in the UK and decided the Crick Boat Show would be a good start. Luckily a volunteer slot became available last minute, so I packed my wellies and my little tent, got on the train and my first canal boat festival adventure was on its way.

The festival site consisted of a display of narrow and wide beam boats on and off the water, various tents with vendors and chandleries, a food court and bar, a kids playground and a seminar tent. My first shift was helping in the Waterways World tent with talks and competitions. My fellow volunteer was a father of five girls (see four of them below) who also happened to be my neighbours on the campground. Everyone was really friendly and they either already owned a boat or were planning to buy one.

I also went on a half hour cruise in a tiny narrow boat called Lazy Days courtesy of the LNBP and viewed at least a dozen shiny new boats moored at Crick during the festival. Best of all though was the variety of friendly and down to earth people I met all weekend. By the second night, having dinner at the cosy The Moorings pub down the road, I pretty much knew everyone who came through the door. This included the couple who owned my favourite dogs of the show, this lovely threesome (see pic).

The only real challenge of the weekend was the weather and the fact that my tent really wasn’t made for non-stop rain that lasted for two nights and the day in between. Water started collecting on the inside edges during the first night. So I had to mop it up every so often, cover my sleeping bag with a plastic sheet and could only hope the howling wind wouldn’t blow me away completely. Luckily the volunteer family next door came to the rescue by filling my hot water bottle. Phew.

I have only recently become interested in boating and being at Crick confirmed the impression I got from reading various blogs, forums and websites on the topic. It is a unique community of people of all ages and backgrounds and a fascinating and often hidden world well worth exploring. There are canal pubs, book barges, even a floating hair salon. Do you know where your nearest canal is? It may be just around the corner, so get on the towpath and get chatting to the boaters.

Love of Literature: The Oxford Literature Festival 2012

It’s been way too long since I volunteered at a writers festival, so I couldn’t wait to board a train on Friday afternoon to get to the Oxford Literature Festival, which runs from 24 March until 1 April. Unbelievably, we had beautiful sunshine for three days in a row and despite only having 48 hours I certainly made the best of the short weekend.

After breakfast with my host, a Korean friend who I’d met in Dublin years earlier, and a nice walk through the park, I spent Saturday afternoon at Corpus Christi College stewarding at three very different events. First up were two fabulous female writers, Australian journalist Caroline Brothers whose novel Hinterland explores issues around unaccompanied child refugees and Kamin Mohammadi whose memoir aims to build a bridge between her life in the UK and her native country of Iran. Both were fascinating stories, so my first festival day was already off to a great start.

The next event required wearing a blue witches hat as it was time for celebrating the 25th birthday of Winnie the Witch – complete with fairy cakes and lots of magic. My final event for the day was an evening of ‘worshipping’ Sylvia Plath with beautiful songs and some quite emotional personal reminiscences and readings.

Bright and early the next morning, I had a shift at the box office, which turned out to be great fun too. We had a busy day and did our best to accommodate everyone’s requests, exchange tickets, show audience members the way to various venues and reunite the odd pair of glasses with their owner. As an unexpected treat I was given tickets to talks at the Bodleian as well as the Sheldonian, which I was told I just couldn’t miss while visiting the city. It was true, both venues were architecturally absolutely stunning and were the perfect last chapter of my whirlwind festival trip to Oxford.

Change is Contagious: WOW Women of the World Festival 2012

I must say that when I first heard about Southbank Centre’s WOW Women of the World Festival (7-11 March 2012) I did not expect it to be either very groundbreaking nor very feminist. How wrong I was. It was a weekend packed with an amazing range of diverse speakers, from prominent public figures to what I have no doubt will be the next generation of feminist campaigners.

The all-encompassing programme, which was incredibly well organised and encouraged lively debate, included a broad range of topics, which were all very relevant in today’s society. More than that, the speakers and audience members genuinely cared for change to happen. There was a lovely, collaborative atmosphere, women and men of all ages sharing sometimes quite personal stories.

The conference, which had only started this time last year on the occasion of the 100th anniversay of International Women’s Day, attracted thousands of people over a long weekend. It included a WOW market, speed mentoring, an art project called ‘Phenomenal People’ and plenty of space for open debate. Sessions which I thought were particularly fascinating and moving were one on violence, one on being childless/childfree and one about the Arab Spring.

Apparently WOW has already got a sister festival in Baltimore as of this year and is going to expand into even more countries, such as Iceland and Australia in the years to come. From what I’ve experienced this year I wouldn’t be surprised if the sell-out event will continue to grow even further. It was an intense weekend, which left me partly thrilled to have met so many others who share my own values, partly anxious to keep pushing for equality in all areas of society. No matter what.

Amazing Adventures: The Banff Mountain Film Festival UK 2012

I’m so glad I found the Banff Mountain Film Festival UK, which was held in the beautiful Union Chapel in Islington from 21-24 February 2012 and various other locations around the UK as well. So how come a Canadian festival does screenings in the UK? BMFF has been inspiring adventurers and outdoor enthusiasts since 1975 and for the past few years the World Tour has screened the festival winners in 30 countries across the globe. Nell and Simon, both hailing from Australia, set up the UK tour in 2010 and it has been going strong ever since.

What is unique about Banff UK is that instead of showing individual movies at various times, you book a ticket for a whole evening of films of different lengths, which all won prizes at Banff. I helped out at two of the four nights with signing punters up for the free raffle and giving general information. I really loved ‘Obe and Ashima’, a docu about a 9-year old girl who is one of the new talents of the bouldering scene. Other films were about extreme mountain biking, slacklining across canyons without a net, a gruelling climb to the top of one of Pakistan’s 8000 metre peaks in freezing cold and a tragic but inspiring story of a cayaking trip in the Congo.

Even if you’re not that much into extreme sports, watching people fight so hard for their dreams can be a great motivation for anyone to succeed in their chosen field. For me Banff UK also brought back good memories of my first festival in Vancouver last year, the Vancouver Mountain Film Festival, which was just as much fun. Take a look at each festival website for some video clips that will make your jaw drop. Urban downhill skiing anyone?